BERLIN: Thousands of young climate activists massed in Berlin on Friday to press the likely successors to outgoing chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to do more to slash dangerous emissions.
The Fridays for Future youth movement called the march from the Brandenburg Gate landmark through the government quarter a month after the German general election. Holding signs such as "Make Love, Not CO2" and "The Snow Must Go On", the crowd chanted "Our future -- off the negotiating table!"
The centre-left Social Democrats are working toward a coalition with the smaller ecologist Greens party and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), with the aim of installing a new government by early December.
Last week the parties unveiled a preliminary roadmap for a four-year term including a planned zero-emissions target by 2045 and accelerated exit from coal energy by 2030. But the head of the German chapter of Fridays for Future, Luisa Neubauer, has blasted the programme as "insufficient" to meet Berlin’s international emission-reduction commitments, after years of what she called disappointing action by the Merkel government.
The movement wants to make the 2030 coal exit target legally binding and the powerful German auto industry to stop building vehicles whose engines burn fossil fuels by 2025. Demonstrators on Friday were particularly frustrated that the Free Democrats torpedoed a proposal by the Greens to introduce a nationwide speed limit on the famed autobahns, and booed a mention of FDP leader Christian Lindner.
"It’s something that would hardly cost anything and would make a big difference," said Larena Dix, 23, an architecture student in Dresden who travelled to the capital for the rally. Celine Schneider, also 23 and studying law, said she hoped the Greens would fight harder in the coalition talks, particularly for changes to agriculture policy to cut meat consumption.
"They shouldn’t just roll over," she said of the party which rose from the environmentalist protests of the 1970s. Biologist Joy Hatzidakis, 47, brought her three young children to the demonstration, saying their health and well-being were on the line.
"A lot of people want change but aren’t doing anything -- at least we’re raising our voices," she said. Meanwhile, United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said the current climate situation was "a one-way ticket for disaster" and stressed the need to avoid a failure at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow.The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, struck at the COP21 summit, called for capping global warming at well below 2 deg C above the pre-industrial level, and ideally closer to 1.5 deg C.
Guterres said the present indications "show a pathway of at least 2.7 deg C heating above pre-industrial levels, and that's obviously a one way ticket for disaster". "The carbon pollution of a handful of countries has brought humanity to its knees and they bear the greatest responsibility," he told an online press conference with members of the Covering Climate Now international project.
"I hope we are still on time to avoid a failure in Glasgow, but time is running short, and things are getting more difficult and that is why I'm very, very worried. I'm afraid things might get wrong," he said.
"The G-20 leaders will meet in Rome and they know their economies are responsible for four-fifth of planet carbon pollution," Mr Guterres said. "If they do not stand up...we are headed for terrible human sufferings."
He added: "China and the United States must do more than what they have announced so far." Held between Oct 31 and Nov 12, the Glasgow gathering is seen as a crucial step in setting worldwide emission targets to slow global warming.